opened to him in another direction. Colonel Hauton, Lord Oldborough's
nephew, stayed, during his uncle's absence, at Clermont-park, to be in
readiness for the races, which, this year, were expected to be uncommonly
fine. Buckhurst Falconer had been at school and at the university with the
colonel, and had frequently helped him in his Latin exercises. The colonel
having been always deficient in scholarship, he had early contracted an
aversion to literature, which at last amounted to an antipathy even to the
very sight of books, in consequence, perhaps, of his uncle's ardent and
precipitate desire to make him apply to them whilst his head was full of
tops and balls, kites and ponies. Be this as it may, Commissioner Falconer
thought his son Buckhurst might benefit by his school friendship, and might
now renew and improve the connexion. Accordingly, Buckhurst waited upon
the colonel,--was immediately recognized, and received with promising
demonstrations of joy.

It would be difficult, indeed impossible, to describe Colonel Hauton, so
as to distinguish him from a thousand other young men of the same class,
except, perhaps, that he might be characterized by having more exclusive
and inveterate selfishness. Yet this was so far from appearing or being
suspected on a first acquaintance, that he was generally thought a
sociable, good-natured fellow. It was his absolute dependence upon others
for daily amusement and ideas, or, rather, for knowing what to do with
himself, that gave him this semblance of being sociable; the total want of
proper pride and dignity in his whole deportment, a certain _slang_ and
familiarity of tone, gave superficial observers the notion that he was
good-natured. It was Colonel Hauton's great ambition to look like his own
coachman; he succeeded only so far as to look like his groom: but though he
kept company with jockeys and coachmen, grooms and stable-boys, yet not the
stiffest, haughtiest, flat-backed Don of Spain, in Spain's proudest days,
could be more completely aristocratic in his principles, or more despotic